Medical science has demonstrated that early and continual monitoring of fetal development and maternal health is essential to detecting complications in pregnancy and lowering infant mortality and morbidity. Historically, physicians have maintained handwritten records of the progress of mother and fetus for diagnosis of potential complications. However, this method of supervision may not facilitate an early detection of pathological states, since the handwritten format makes retrospective envisionment of developmental progress difficult, especially when visits occur at non-uniform time intervals. In addition, changes in some parameters may be of negligible importance at a certain gestational age, but of utmost significance at another, and therefore may be overlooked for lack of a conspicuous correlation between the change itself and the gestational week of its occurrence. As a result, developing pathological conditions indicated by handwritten records may be overlooked until more obvious symptoms appear.
A further short-coming of handwritten records is the large amount of work required to reduce handwritten data to a computer accessible form. Computer accessible pregnancy data presents the capability to ascertain, for example, the relative success of prenatal care among different physicians, hospitals or geographic areas, the effects of localized environmental factors on perinatal development and mortality, or the success of specific treatments administered during pregnancy. However, to date no system has been developed which facilitates computerization of records while matching the expediency of recording data by hand, and so exploration of such statistical inquiries has been impeded.
Dr. Bjorn Westin has explored graphical expression of data such as maternal weight gain, symphysis-fundal height, and maternal blood pressure as a method of pregnancy supervision. This method has had a significantly beneficial effect on obstetrical care and teaching in Sweden, where it has been shown to result in a reduction in antepartum, intrapartum, and neonatal mortality, as well as a general improvement in the overall condition of newborns. However, Dr. Westin's charts are based on data which is originally recorded in a handwritten format, necessitating time-consuming reprocessing to produce the actual graphs. As a result, potential indications of pathological states are apparent only in retrospect and are not conspicuously available to the patient's physician when they first appear. Furthermore, the various data parameters are presented on separate axes, thereby occupying significant space as well as impeding the recognition of symptoms which are best indicated by simultaneous observation of the collective progress of development of several parameters.
Consequently, there exists a need for a pregnancy data management system which makes efficient use of observed pregnancy data, which utilizes an expedient means for data recording, and which facilitates computer acquisition of data.